On the bright side, Marilyn Tavenner - appointed by President Obama to take over CMS within the Department of Health and human Services in 2013 - did not suffer a hard-drive crash. However, as MSNBC reports [5], she may be unable to cooperate with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenas because she deleted emails.
A team of HHS officials is now working to reconstruct Tavenner’s inbox by collecting emails from people she typically corresponded with and through other methods. They expect to recover “most, but not all” of Tavenner’s emails, the letter adds.
“While we have not identified any specific emails that we will be unable to retrieve, it is possible that some emails may not be available to HHS, and we are therefore filing this memorandum,” Kathleen Cantwell, a records management official at the agency wrote.
The excuse:
According to the letter and two senior HHS officials with knowledge of the matter, Tavenner receives an unusually large number of emails – some 10,000-12,000 per month – since her address is public and advocacy groups occasionally urge their members to contact her. In order to stay below the agency’s Microsoft Outlook email size limit, Tavenner would regularly delete emails after copying or forwarding them to her staff for retention.
However...
While it’s impossible to know how many messages might be missing, HHS staffers studied her email habits for a month and estimated that at least 90 percent of her traffic was within the agency, the officials said.
But this is still the most transparent administration ever...
